


The Comic Book Store at the End of the Universe

by imkerfuffled



Series: Lucia Castillo, Helper of Superheroes [10]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Temporary Character Death, ft. cameos from deadpool and peter parker, rated for language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2019-11-27 04:35:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18189833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imkerfuffled/pseuds/imkerfuffled
Summary: Lucia and Co. have no idea what's about to hit them when a giant spaceship appears over Manhattan. Whatever happens, things will never be the same again.





	1. The Snap

**Author's Note:**

> So remember that Infinity War fic I said I was working on? Well, I finally had time to actually watch Infinity War, so here it is. Don't say I didn't warn you.

SM: ok heads up there’s a SPACESHIP and a WIZARD and we’re going into SPACE and HOLY SHIT HOW COOL IS THAT but also things are rly bad and i probs cant keep you updated in space but be careful. don’t worry we got this

* * *

 

The comic book store on the corner of Lincoln Parkway and Union Avenue had seen many changes over the years. The water stains in the ceiling had grown yellower; the wall of movies had moved to the merchandise area to make room for more comics; the Captain America sections had all but disappeared since the Sokovia Accords. A new group of customers meandered through the aisles, and a new cashier sat behind the checkout counter now that Jackie had gone off to college.

But the biggest change had been the addition of Game Night. Every Friday, people were invited to come to the store to play whatever game the employees had picked out that week, be it a board game, card game, or tabletop RPG. To facilitate this, they moved the cardboard display racks at the front of the comics section next to the checkout and replaced them with a coffee table surrounded by half a dozen brightly colored beanbag chairs.

Today, however, was not a Friday, so the beanbag chairs were largely empty. Two teenage girls lounged next to each other on a green beanbag, their legs tangled up in each other’s. One was tall, with an explosion of dark curls held in place by her favorite maroon beanie. She wore a matching flannel and dark skinny jeans, and she was flipping through a book about the Sokovia Accords. The other girl was short, with the kind of skin that some would call “tan” and others would call “brown.” She was curled up in her Black Widow jacket—which finally fit after six years of owning it—with a Thor comic propped up against her threadbare purple bookbag.

Lucia couldn’t focus on her comic. Her mind kept drifting back to the text she had received earlier from Spider-Man and the giant spinning disk that had briefly appeared in the Manhattan skyline with it, but, whatever happened, Spider-Man (and apparently a wizard?) would save the day. She knew that in her heart.

It didn’t stop her from worrying.

“Julie?” she whispered, glancing around them first to make sure no one else could hear.

“Hm?” Julie replied as she turned a page in her book.

“What do you think is happening?”

Julie looked up and placed her finger to mark her spot in the book.

There was no warning. No sirens blared; no sense of impending doom fell over the comic book store. Lucia only saw it because she was looking straight at Julie.

It started in the hand holding the book. The faintest bit of motion: impossible, unnatural motion. At first glance, her fingers seemed to be expanding. No, Lucia realized, they were falling apart, disintegrating like the ashes of spent coal. And it was _spreading._ Up Julie’s hand, up her arm—the book fell onto the beanbag chair with a soft _thump_. Her feet disappeared, then her legs. It happened so quickly Lucia didn’t have time to notice the cashier, Deadpool by the counter, the kids in the costume section, all going through the same thing. The briefest of confused looks passed over both their faces, and it was over as soon as it began.

Juliette Rodriguez was gone.

* * *

 

Six years ago, Lucia’s school bus was attacked by a monster pulled straight from the zeitgeist of old Japanese films by a villainous reality warper. They were saved by Black Widow and Hawkeye while the rest of the Avengers fought off the beast.

She remembered running to the police at the other end of the street, as per Hawkeye’s orders.

She did not remember anything after that.

Now, she didn’t remember leaving the comic book store. She didn’t remember Deadpool stumbling around half-disintegrated as his body tried to piece itself back together. She didn’t remember the driverless cars wrapped around streetlamps and fire hydrants. She didn’t remember the blanket where a homeless man used to sit rattling a can of change, and she didn’t remember the can itself lying abandoned on its side with the pennies spilling out. She didn’t remember the woman sobbing over a baby stroller with no baby in it.

She didn’t remember crossing the street without looking both ways or standing at the top of the subway entrance, staring blankly down the steps. She didn’t remember deciding the subway would be too dangerous—if the streets were this chaotic, she could only imagine what the rails were like—or stumbling on down the street.

She didn’t remember her parents calling her on her cell phone. She didn’t remember listening to their frantic questions, and she didn’t remember answering them all in a daze.

She didn’t remember how she got home.

She didn’t remember Adrian’s car pulling up outside the apartment, or his pounding feet on the stairs, or him bursting through the door in a panic. She didn’t remember him screeching to a halt when he saw the three of them there, safe, in the living room.

She didn’t remember him choking out the words, “Jackie’s gone.”

She barely remembered taking a step toward him, then another, then rushing at him and wrapping her arms around his waist in a crushing hug.

And then she remembered.

She remembered sitting on the curb with her classmates in the aftermath of the battle while other students had tearful reunions with their parents. She remembered seeing her own parents and running to meet them. She remembered babbling excitedly—and somewhat hysterically—about her role in the matter.

And she remembered Julie. Julie, who had seen the news on the television and realized it was Lucia’s bus that was trapped by the monster. Julie, who had forced her parents to drive her to the site. Julie, who sprinted to her side with panicked tears in her eyes and engulfed her in the longest, tightest bear hug of her life.

Only then, hours after she’d been rescued, had she burst into tears, and only now, with her arms around her brother and the memory of her best friend in her mind, did she do it again.

* * *

That night, Lucia didn’t get any sleep. She simply laid in bed for hours, tossing and turning and staring at the ceiling, alternately cursing the God she only vaguely believed in and praying that it was all just a dream, that she would wake up in the morning to the sound of Julie’s texts reaching her phone.

Julie always was an early riser.

The second night she slept for only a few hours, and even then only because she passed out from exhaustion at half past midnight. She dreamt that the whole world dissolved beneath her feet, leaving all the trees, houses, cars, busses, and planes drifting aimlessly through space. Not a single person remained. The silence was so thick she could move through it, and she swam across the vast emptiness until she saw, off in the distance, a large yellow structure floating partially on its side: a school bus.

She blinked, and there she was sitting inside it in the third to last row on the left-hand side, the sole occupied seat on the bus. Instinctively, she stood up and moved to the opposite window, waiting for—dreading—what was about to happen. She knew, and she could do nothing to stop it. With her hands pressed against the cold glass, she watched as, one by one, things began to disappear. First a car, then a fire hydrant… another car… a tree. Finally, the buildings crumbled to dust. She watched until she and the school bus were the only objects left in the universe. Nothing, not even the stars, broke the unending sea of black outside the window.

She wanted to scream, to pound her fists against the glass until the universe relented and brought everything back, but she found she couldn’t even move a muscle. Either fear or some unknown force held her in place. Someone would come to save her, surely? She couldn’t be the only one left.

Underneath her fingers, the window began to crumble.

* * *

 

Lucia did not get any sleep on the third night.

* * *

 

Classes were cancelled while the school figured out how to run without its principal, all its vice principals, and half its staff. And half its students. Public infrastructure was still in shambles. Roads had yet to be cleared of all the crashed cars; subway lines were still shut down; even the mail came late, when it came at all. Looters and vandals ran the streets. Through everything, Lucia collected news articles and blog postings and television clips like her hoarded copies of the leaked SHIELD files.

This was exactly the sort of thing Julie would have done—should be doing—for her blog. Lucia didn’t know how to break it to her 16,172 followers that she was… gone. Lucia had the password. She could—should—continue the blog. It was what Julie would have wanted. But Lucia didn’t have her best friend’s way with words. For Lucia, the English language was merely a tool, but Julie turned it into a blank canvas waiting to be made into a masterpiece. Lucia couldn’t possibly do that justice.

What she could do, that Julie never seemed to get the hang of, was numbers, and the list of confirmed… victims (not the dead… she couldn’t say ‘dead’) grew longer each day. Julie; Jackie; Jackie’s replacement at the comic book store, Mica; Deadpool (?); Aunt Maria; Mr. Rodriguez; Julie’s sister, Audrey; Dylan, Mackenna, Michael, Jake, all three Bens, Nicholas, Samantha, Kylie, and Riley from school; Principal Henderson; cousins Luis, Juan, and Helena; the entire Almada family; Mrs. Moretti in apartment B; Mr. Smirnov across the street; Luke and Connor, the twins in apartment A…

She hit the enter key and slowly, hunt and peck-style, typed out ‘Spider-Man.’ Her fingers hovered over the shift and question mark keys, just as they had when she added Deadpool to the list. Surely he couldn’t really be… gone. He had a healing factor just like Deadpool, and last she had seen, _he_ was doing just fine… Well, fine by Deadpool’s standards in any case, and by Spider-Man’s own admission his healing factor wasn’t as strong as Deadpool’s.

Lucia pulled out her phone and scrolled up the long, increasingly desperate line of outgoing texts in her conversation with Spider-Man. With a sigh, she saved the document as it was and shut her laptop.

* * *

 

A week passed, then two. Lucia refused to leave the apartment for anything. She still couldn’t sleep, and she barely ate, even when she overheard her parents whispering about sending her to a therapist. The last therapist she’d seen had been unbearably quiet and, when she _had_ spoken, treated Lucia like she’d been three instead of the ten and a half she had been. Lucia had no interest in seeing _her_ again.

On the second night of the third week, once she finally succumbed to sleep, she had the dream again. This wasn’t unusual—she had some variation of that dream every night now—but this time it ended differently. When the last speck of dust outside the bus window disappeared, and she lost all hope of being rescued, and the sense of déjà vu washed over her, she remembered something. She remembered a split-second decision to shove Spider-Man into her car. She remembered shooting a toy arrow at the idiot cashier without hesitation. She remembered being the first to give Black Widow her jacket when she needed it to cushion the broken window.

She was Lucia Castillo. She did not freeze. She did not cower. She took action.

She was Blackhawk, and she faced the void of her dream head on.

* * *

 

School started up again that next month. The Castillos were reluctant to let their daughter out of their sight, and, according to social media, a lot of other parents felt the same way, but Lucia’s had what most of the others didn’t: prior experience. Six years ago, after the attack, Lucia had talked them down from pulling her out of school, and today…

“Mom, Dad. I know you’re scared it could happen again, but on the off chance it does it won’t matter where I am. Everyone’s saying it was just random who was—who disappeared, and there’s nothing anyone could do to stop it.” She took a deep breath to steady her voice. “You can’t protect me. You just have to accept that.”

Lucia looked her father in the eye, and a silent understanding passed between them. Something in their relationship had changed when Lucia had disobeyed him to fight Frank the Mighty Matchstick (as she and Spider-Man had taken to calling him). As rebellious as she could be in other areas, Lucia rarely ever went against her parents’ orders, and never as boldly or blatantly as that. She had expected her father to ground her or take away her bow, but none of that had happened. If anything, his respect for her had only grown.

So on Monday Lucia found herself being dropped off in front of the school, purple bookbag in hand and Black Widow jacket wrapped tightly around her. She stared up at the school building. It looked exactly like it had three weeks ago: the same grimy brick exterior, the same dry grass poking through the same cracked sidewalk. The same kids trudging through the same double doors as the same bell blared over the loudspeakers.

But just below the surface, Lucia saw the wide, frightened eyes watching as parents drove away, wondering if they’d be there to pick them up. She saw the tearful reunions as students found friends they thought they’d never see again. She saw the gaps in the crowds where half the student body should have been.

She saw the empty space at her left side where Julie should have been.

A hot, prickling sensation rose up behind her eyes, and she clenched her jaw tight until it went away. She turned her back to the school and watched her father’s car drive off, the same car she and Spider-Man once fought off a minor supervillain from, and she made her decision.

She marched through the double doors with newfound determination. Her feet took her past the library, down the athletics wing, and into the main gym. The few members of the girls’ basketball team who were there already gave her confused looks, but something in her face must have warned them not to comment. No one said a word as she shoved open the heavy back doors and marched straight through them without once turning back.

If anyone noticed the black and red end of her bow peeking over the edge of her bookbag, they didn’t mention it either.

With the same purposeful stride, she crossed the sports field, looked both ways at the street beyond, and crossed into a narrow side street. Past that was another side street to the left, then a proper alleyway with a big, green dumpster that she ducked behind. Ignoring the stench of week-old Chinese food emanating from the dumpster, she tossed her bookbag on a relatively grime-free spot on the ground. She stripped out of her signature jacket and folded it neatly inside the bag, revealing the thick black hoodie she had on underneath. With a few tugs on her hair ties, she shook her hair out of its pigtails and, fumbling, braided it into one long strand.

The bow was still lying in her bookbag, and for a second, she hesitated to take it out. There was no going back once she did that.

She crouched down, steadied her hands, and pulled from the bag her bow, her quiver, and something else. A small scrap of dark purple cloth with two holes in its middle and long ribbons trailing off its sides: a domino mask.

She may not be able to continue Julie's blog, but she could do this. Spider-Man was gone—dead—as well as who knew who else. Someone had to fill the gaps they left behind. Lucia wouldn’t kid herself and pretend she could hold a torch to Spider-Man, but she had to try. For him, for Julie, for everyone she would never see again, for everyone who would never get the decency of a proper funeral.

With a deep breath, she tied the domino mask around her head, slung her quiver over her shoulder, and stood up.

Lucia Castillo may have walked into that alley, but the girl who walked out was Blackhawk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @MARVEL I AM TAKING A BIG RISK HERE, SO YOU HAD BETTER FIX THIS RIGHT. I AM COUNTING ON YOU.
> 
> Edit: How could I forget to include [this amazing commission](https://66.media.tumblr.com/919952a5c20d324c20ebb6fdf47eef6c/tumblr_pohu6aNBij1xu7thso1_1280.png) of Lucia made by trash-kiing on tumblr??? LOOK AT IT, IT'S SO PRETTY ASKHDFKAGSF


	2. Blackhawk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lied, there's going to be three chapters. The third won't come out until after Endgame, though.

In the aftermath of Thanos’ attack, the Earth, like so many other planets, fell into chaos. All around the world, things broke down. Channel after channel on television showed scenes of apocalyptic destruction. Power vacuums left by vanished leaders sparked riots and revolutions across the world. Nations turned to war over who was to blame. Food deserts bloomed in developed nations when produce shipments disappeared or were delayed. Massive sinkholes opened up all around the world where now-nonexistent root structures held the soil together. Nuclear power plants went into meltdown with no one to oversee them. In some places, the bodies of the second wave of victims—those killed in the immediate aftermath by cars that lost their drivers, airplanes that lost their flight crews, patients who lost their surgeons, babies who lost their parents, and so on, endlessly—still lay rotting in piles in the streets.

Religious groups of every creed called it the end of days.

And through it all, kindness prevailed. Newly childless parents took in newly orphaned children. Loved ones reunited after years of estrangement. Donations poured in by the millions to the numerous charity organizations that sprung up to help remaining victims. Supplies were shipped to areas plunged into the pre-industrial period by power outages. People banded together to fend off looters running the streets. Neighbors helped neighbors, and together—tentatively, but growing stronger every day—the survivors survived.

Few people noticed one small survivor in a domino mask slip through side streets and alleyways until she reached the corner she was looking for. Those who did see her didn’t say anything, but they took note, and they remembered.

Blackhawk stood on the corner of Union Avenue and Lincoln Parkway and stared up at what used to be her favorite comic book store. Trash littered the sidewalk in front of it. Half the neon letters in the sign were smashed. The “I” flickered and threw sparks, and the “E” hung at an angle. The “K” was missing entirely. Only one of the big storefront windows remained intact, and it revealed a bleak picture of the interior.

What used to be a cozy, welcoming little shop could now be used as a set in a post-apocalyptic movie. All the lights were dead. The costume racks and display stands were tipped over, their contents strewn across the floor with all the garbage that had blown in from the street. The cardboard cutout of Iron Man was flat on the ground with dirty boot prints covering every inch of it. Half the comics lay crumpled on the floor, their pages fluttering weakly in the breeze from outside. The door to the back room sat open, as did the cash register, noticeably empty.

In contrast, the coffee table and the beanbag chairs around it looked completely untouched.

Lucia walked to the threshold of the door and took a deep breath. The last time she’d been here…

She opened the door and stepped inside. The daylight was enough to see by, but the shadows in the corners were still a little too dark for her liking. She flicked the light switch a few times. Nothing. Of course. A hard lump rose in her throat, but she pushed it down.

A few more steps into the store, her red sneakers crunching on broken glass, and she stopped. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from the green beanbag chair, the last place she had seen… the last place she would _ever_ see… her best friend in the world.

Her breath hitched, then picked up pace. The lump in her throat made a reappearance. Some part of her—the same part that had watched with detached curiosity as a rampaging monster tore apart a street right in front of her—knew this was a panic attack. The last time this had happened, she had been ten years old, and her teacher had tried to make her get on a school bus for an end of the year field trip.

Ever since the monster attack, she hadn’t been able to look at buses the same way, and she doubted she’d ever be able to do the same to this comic book store now. The thought made her angry, not sad. How dare God take Julie away from her? How dare He ruin her favorite place in the city?

And just like that, the panic attack was over. With one last deep breath, she got to work.

She picked up the cardboard cutout, brushed off some of the dirt and dust, and propped it up as best as she could against the counter. She righted the display stands and racks and put everything back up the way it had been just a few weeks ago. Using the mop bucket from the back room, she gathered up all the scattered comic books, smoothed out the bent and crumpled pages, and sorted them into the correct places on the shelves. She swept all the broken glass into a dustpan and, taking several trips, threw it in the dumpster out back.

By the time fourth period came around—or would have if she’d stayed in class—the comic book store looked halfway presentable. The windows were beyond Lucia’s power to fix, but maybe she could do something about the sign.

On the off-chance that she might find a ladder there, she checked in the back room, and that was when she heard footsteps on the street. Occasionally, people would pass by and give her odd looks while she worked, but it still startled her when she first saw or heard them. This street had been hit hard by the attack—the only store still open was the little bodega across the street—and the post-apocalyptic air about the place made Lucia feel like she was the last person on Earth.

She poked her head out of the back office. Three men were walking down the far end of the street, each with haircuts worse than the last and sports clothes to match: Bed Stuy’s resident Russian mobsters, affectionately known by the natives as the tracksuit mafia. Lucia didn’t have to see the guns to know these three were packing.

She ducked back into the office, her heart racing. Her bow and quiver lay next to the computer where she’d left them while she worked. She snatched them up and pressed her back against the wall, straining her ears.

“Bro,” one tracksuit said, his voice muffled by the walls, “comic book store.”

“So?” said another.

“Iron Man, bro. Signs everything,” said the first one, “Is free money, bro.”

Lucia’s breath caught in her throat.

“Is probably empty,” said the third tracksuit, “Look, windows.”

“Nah, bro. Inside is clean, bro. Free money.”

“No,” Lucia whispered, too quietly to be heard from outside, “ _Go_ _away!_ ”

The footsteps only grew nearer and nearer, until they were right inside the comic book store. They stomped around a little longer, and then…

“Bro!” said the second voice, “Signed shit!”

“See, bro. I tell you; free money, bro.”

From the angle and distance of their voices, it sounded like they’d found the bookshelf display of, as they so elegantly put it, ‘signed shit:’ biographies signed by Tony Stark, action figures signed by War Machine, trading cards signed by Patriot, etc. It even held a rock that claimed to be taken from the secret Inhuman base on the moon.

Lucia ground her teeth together. The thought of anything from this store— _her_ store, no matter what had happened here—falling in the hands of the tracksuit mafia made her blood boil. These things and the people behind them, they didn’t matter to the tracksuits; all they cared about was the money. Even on the best of days they were an ugly stain on society, and now here they were looting the dead, preying on people in the world’s darkest hour. Despicable.

But Lucia wasn’t just Lucia anymore.

She took a deep breath, nocked an arrow to her bow, and swung around the doorframe. “FREEZE!” she shouted, aiming straight at the tracksuit holding the moon rock, “Step away from the shelf!”

The man to the left of the moon rock tracksuit pulled his gun on her. The man to the right spun around and dropped a boxed Vision action figure. Not one of them did as they were told.

“You—” Lucia swung her bow to point at the tracksuit with the gun, walking towards them as she spoke. “Drop it. You—” She swung towards the tracksuit with the Vision. “Pick it up.”

A pause.

“Bro, check out kid Hawkette,” said the moon rock tracksuit, the second one who’d spoken.

“Is just a girl, bro,” the first one—the one with the gun—laughed, “Go home, girl, before I shoot you.”

“Funny,” Lucia said through gritted teeth, “I was about to tell _you_ the same thing.” Her voice didn’t waver, and her bow didn’t shake, though she wanted nothing more than to throw her hands in the air and sink to her knees.

No. More than anything, she wanted to grind this creep’s smug face into the dirt.

“You hear that, bro,” the third one laughed, nudging the one in the middle, “Girl is going to shoot you, bro.”

His too.

“Drop the gun,” Lucia growled, “Now.”

“Girl—”

“Drop it!”

“Don’t be stupid, girl.”

“I said _drop it!_ ”

“You think I won’t shoot you just because you are little girl?”

“You think _I_ won’t shoot _you!?_ ” Lucia’s voice rose with each exchange, and her breathing came heavy with fury, like she’d just run up three flights of stairs. Across the street, the woman who ran the bodega stopped sweeping her sidewalk to watch.

The tracksuits exchanged looks.

“Well,” said the first one, “Yes.”

Lucia’s lip curled. Her aim shifted ever-so-slightly to the left, and she released the bowstring.

The tracksuit screamed and clutched at the arrow sticking out of his shoulder. His pistol clattered to the ground. The other two grabbed their guns out of their waistbands, but Lucia already had a second arrow nocked and ready. She walked forward and kicked the gun under the coffee table behind her.

“ _Try me,_ ” she hissed at them, “I _dare_ you.”

“You’re crazy!” the first tracksuit yelled. Blood was beginning to seep through his fingers. “Fucking crazy bitch girl!”

Lucia pointed her bow at point-blank range at one then the other of the two still-armed tracksuits. “Now you, drop your guns and slide them over to me.”

The tracksuits hesitated.

“We have two guns,” the third one said, “You have one bow. You shoot one of us; we shoot you. That is how this works.”

“You want to risk me aiming for the head this time? Or better yet—” Lucia swung her bow down to aim between the third tracksuit’s legs. She looked him straight in the eyes. “ _I’ve done it before.”_

His eyes widened, and they both scrambled to be the first to toss their weapon to the ground.

“Now _here’s_ how this works,” she said, kicking the guns back with the first tracksuit’s, “You’re going to put everything back the way you found it, you’re going to run back to your little tracksuit masters, and you’re going to tell them that this comic book store is _off. Limits._ ” She punctuated her words by jabbing her bow at each tracksuit in turn. “You let them know this store—this _street_ —is under Blackhawk’s protection. If any of you take so much as _one step_ past the street sign, I will make you pay. _Do you understand?_ ”

“Da, da!” cried the first tracksuit. He followed up with more Russian that Lucia suspected she didn’t need to translate.

“ _Now!”_

They hastily replaced the moon rock and Vision action figure and rushed out the door, the arrow still sticking out of the first tracksuit’s shoulder.

Lucia stood there watching until the last echoes of their footsteps stopped rebounding off the brick walls. The moment she could be sure they were gone, she raced to the back office, slammed the door behind her, and sank to the floor. Her eyes stung, and her hands shook. The lump in her throat rose again.

She had never seen a gun in real life before. Sure, she knew people who knew people who’d had guns pulled on them—it was hard not to, growing up in Bed Stuy—but it was one thing to hear about it in stories and wonder how she’d react; it was another thing entirely to experience it herself. Even facing down Frank the Mighty Matchstick didn’t fully compare—at least she’d had Spider-Man with her then—but now…

Now it dawned on her that she might have just made an enemy of the Russian mafia.

Her whole body began to shake.

Finally, approximately five minutes after she’d entered the back office, she had calmed down enough to stand up and brush herself off. With a last, long sigh, she set her bow on the computer desk and returned to the store proper.

She still had work left to do, after all.

* * *

 

Across the street, the lady in the bodega watched as the teenager in a homemade domino mask went door to door asking for a ladder to borrow, and she shook her head with a smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @MARVEL DON'T YOU DARE ERASE ALL THIS CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT WITH TIME-TRAVEL


	3. Endgame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minor Endgame spoilers in this chapter. Nothing big, don't worry. Also, turns out I lied again, there'll probably be four chapters in this one, then at least two chapters in another showing what happens to Adrian and Jackie. The fourth chapter won't come out until we know what's happening in AoS though.
> 
> Also also trash-kiing did another [commission of Lu](https://66.media.tumblr.com/871368d9180fc6500ed447e8219ed30e/tumblr_ppszeyOyfa1xu7thso1_1280.png), this time in her Magpie costume!

It was like waking from a dream, a hundred-year enchanted slumber. It was like blinking. It was like falling through the looking glass. One moment, she was there, and the next…

Juliette Rodriguez opened her eyes, and she was still there. But ‘there’ was different.

The first thing she noticed was the absence: the absence of Lucia’s familiar weight against her legs, the absence of light, of everything that made the comic book store feel like home. All the displays stood empty, and all the shelves gathered dust. At first she thought she’d simply drifted off and lost track of time, but that couldn’t explain half of what she saw.

The billboard down the street that she could have sworn advertized something for McDonalds now sported a peeling endorsement for Fast and Furious 10, which felt off, but she didn’t know enough about the Fast and Furious franchise to question it too thoroughly.

Then she noticed the people. Micah, the new cashier—and they would always think of her as ‘new,’ no matter how many years it may have been since Jackie went off to college—leaned heavily on the counter, looking just as confused and sluggish as Julie felt. The boy standing where the Iron Man cutout should be— _was,_ just a minute ago—looked around with a furrowed brow, as if searching for the cutout. The middle school kids across the store stumbled against the shelves like drunkards after the final call. Julie distinctly remembered Deadpool being there, but he, just like all the comics, and DVDs, and merchandise, was noticeably absent.

She felt like Will from _Stranger Things,_ like she’d crossed over into the Upside Down.

“L-Lucia?” she whispered, surprised to hear her own voice come out in a croak.

All eyes turned to her. For a moment, no one moved. There wasn’t even any air conditioning to stir a breeze.

The boy by the missing Iron Man cutout whispered, “What… happened?”

Then everyone started talking at once.

“Where’s Chris?”

“What the—”

“Hey, my car’s not outside anymore.”

“What the _fuck_?”

“There’s an _arrow_ under my chair.”

“What the _FUCK!?_ ”

Arrow? Julie frowned. Surely the toy Lucia once shot at Mr. McJerkface couldn’t still be here, not after all these years? She stood up and, feeling more and more like she’d never left the dream, walked to the counter.

“Can I see the arrow?” she asked.

Micah blinked. Slowly, silently, she complied.

Julie lifted the arrow to eye-level, weighing it in her hand, examining it from every angle, but she didn’t have to. She knew. The second she saw the fletchings—two red, one black with the number twenty-four written on it in fine-tip silver sharpie--she _knew._

This was Lucia’s arrow. It came from the set she used today: the real set.  

“Something has gone terribly, terribly wrong,” Julie whispered.

Everyone fell silent.

With a growing sense of foreboding, Julie pulled her phone from her pocket. Some of the others followed suit, while some continued to stare blankly around the store.

“Mine’s frozen,” said one of the middle school boys.

Sure enough, when Julie turned it on, her brand new, state-of-the-art Starkphone wouldn’t move past the lock screen, the numbers 12:46 staring up at her in silent mockery. It reminded her a little too strongly of murder mysteries where the victim’s watch broke at the exact moment of their death.

“I’m gonna…” She trailed off, already drifting toward the door.

“Wait, where are you going?” asked one of the middle school kids, a redhead with braces. Her voice betrayed a note of panic. “Shouldn’t we stick together?”

“Yeah...” Julie said absentmindedly as she set the arrow down on a nearby shelf, “I’m just gonna be across the street. Gotta test something…”

No one tried to stop her from leaving the store or crossing the street to the little bodega on the corner. The door opened with a jangle against her hands. She went straight to the newspaper stand and picked one off the top of the stack, her eyes going right to the top left-hand corner.

For a second, she didn’t think she would react at all.

The second passed, and her vision swam. It felt like she was falling. She had to catch herself against a chip rack to keep her knees from giving out.

She didn’t remember paying for the paper with a twenty and leaving before the cashier could count out her change; she didn’t remember crossing the street at a red light only for a blue sedan to screech to a halt to avoid hitting her; and she didn’t remember what Micah said when she returned to the comic book store, her face three shades paler than it should be. All she remembered was dropping the newspaper on the checkout counter and pointing at the upper left-hand corner while the others gathered around her.

The date on the paper read ‘April 24, 2023.

* * *

 

Twenty minutes passed, and they still couldn’t quite believe it. They spent the first five minutes panicking and arguing over whether or not this was possible. Julie brought up what the internet conspiracy sites had dubbed ‘The Continuity Error’ in Hong Kong a few years back, when several objects and people reportedly moved impossible distances in the space between one second and the next. One of the less outlandish explanations, according to the conspiracy theorists, was time travel.

Beyond that, Julie was just as frightened and confused as everyone else.

The next ten minutes were spent across the street using the bodega’s phone to call the parents of all the school-aged kids. These calls were mostly filled with sobs of relief, and it was difficult for anyone else to make out what they said. It wasn’t until one of the middle school kids thought to call their friend, Chris, who’d disappeared with Lucia and Deadpool, that they found out the full extent of what had happened.

They had died. They and half the entire population of the planet had been dead for five years.

Julie had to sit down for a few minutes after that.

When her turn with the phone came she called her father’s cell first, but all it gave her was an error message. Her home number rang out until it reached the answering machine, and her mother’s went straight to voicemail. She told herself that her mother must be at work, and her father… he must have turned to dust just like her. Finally, she tried Lucia’s number, but the woman who answered spoke with a Chinese accent and claimed never to have heard of Lucia Castillo.

Feeling lost and let down, Julie handed the phone to the next person. Iron Man-cutout-boy, who’s name she learned was Dave, offered to drive her home himself before he remembered his car was gone. She decided she would wait with him and Micah until the younger kids’ parents all came to bring them home.

On their way back to the comic book store they found a baby crying alone on the sidewalk. They couldn’t find the baby’s parents anywhere after shouting up and down the street, so they brought it inside to wait with them, figuring its parents would figure out what was happening soon enough and show up.

The minutes passed like hours, and, after a time, even the baby stopped sniffling. At the sound of a car engine, everyone’s heads would snap up hopefully until, each time, the car would pass them by. Nobody said a word.

Twenty-three minutes after Julie slapped that newspaper down on the counter and turned their worlds upside-down, a different kind of engine noise reached their ears. This was louder and higher pitched than the cars, and it sounded much faster than the 35 mph speed limit in this area.

A sleek, black motorcycle sped around the corner and skidded into the empty parking spot outside the comic book store. The driver swung herself off the bike and pulled her helmet off, shaking out her hair as she did so, and Julie finally got a good look at her face.

It was Lucia. Of course it was. But she, just like the comic book store, was different, older. The baby fat was gone from her cheeks, and her mouth was set in a grim line. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail instead of her old pigtails. She wore all black, with an unmistakable eagle logo on her shoulder and glowing purple stripes on her gloves that could only be Widow’s Bites.

Her eyes met Julie’s through the window, and those at least were the same wide, beautiful brown that Julie remembered.

In an instant, Lucia burst through the door and engulfed Julie in the tightest hug of her life. Julie realized she could barely see over Lucia’s head now, and this—not the comic book store, or the date on the newspaper, or Chris— _this_ was what finally made her realize she really was five years in the future. Nothing would ever be the same again.

She threw her arms around Lucia and started sobbing.

“I love you,” Lucia whispered into Julie’s hair, her voice wavering with tears of her own, “I love you so much.”

All Julie trusted herself to do was nod and hold her best friend tighter.

“It’s gonna be okay now,” Lucia said. Julie got the distinct impression she said it just as much for her own benefit as for Julie’s. “It’s all gonna be okay.”


End file.
